Hi, this is my first ever try at gentoo-install on a sparc. Everything has worked nicely so for using the stage3-sparc64-2006.0. I decided to go with the default-linux/sparc/sparc64/2006.1/ profile and ACCEPT_KEYWORD="~sparc". However when i tried to compile the kernel (vanilla-sources-2.6.18-rc4) i ran into the following:

Well i have what is shipped in the 2006.0 install cd. I don't think it is gcc-sparc64 , just gcc. I'm afraid i can't get any logs as the NVRAM/TOD battery died on me I'm hoping to replace it on Monday, and get the EEPROM reset so i can edit it myself (the machine is a workstation from the uni).

What CHOST should i use, the default sparc-unknown-linux-gnu seems a little vague...

That's the CHOST you want. This is due to the fact that the userland is actually in 32 bits while the kernel is 64 bits. Because of this, we have a seperate compiler for the kernel (gcc-sparc64) than we do for userland. When building the kernel, the kernel will normally find this compiler without a problem. However for some reason it isn't for you, and that's why you see the errors you do. Once you get your machine back up, hopefully we can better diagnose it.

Well, turns out that due to a long downtime the clock in the NVRAM/TOD stoped itself. Usualy this wouldn't be a problem as solaris OS has support for 'Kick start'-ing the clock. Is there a similar option for linux-kernels?

Right now i'm installing 2005.1-r1 version as i hope it's more mature...

I'll post back if run into any problems. Great thanks for the help so far!

Well so far so good! I booted 2005.1-r1 install cd and went with 2005.1-r1 stage3. I choose the 2006.0 profile though and went with sparc stable keyword. This time the kernel booted so right now i'm upgrading my toolchain.

I found one odd thing: if i choose the ondemand governor the network speed drops to ~10k/s !? I find this very strange...

Well now that my initial problem is solved i guess i should mark this [solved]...

By the way, i noticed one more strangeness: I got some spare sticks of RAM so i thought i'd use them (they're from other sunblade 100), but with 2 256Mb sticks the machine wouldn't boot, no matter how i placed the sticks. I then placed all four 256Mb sticks in it and it works fine. Whats up?

One, hopefully, last question: What should i do to get X working properly? I emerged xorg-x11-7.1 with appropriate video_cards set in make.conf. At last i found the use of 'ReferenceClock', so now at least X does start. But it's not very useable... I'm useing the 'ati' driver from xorg.

Well i sort of found a solution, however strange it may be... The solution is to set DefaultDepth to 24 in xorg.conf (this applies both to 6.8 and 7.1). Kde is still sluggish though, so i guess i have to buy a pci graphics card to be able to use it

For what it is worth here is my xorg.conf from xorg-7.1.1. From my experiences, both xorg-6.8 and 7.1 have been sluggish on the SunBlades 100/150. Worth noting are the commented out options for the chipset; those were inserted by using xorg's config utility, but with those enabled, xorg crashes bad. Another item to note is that I have not been able to get GLX working, which I thought the Mach64 chipsets could support, but I might be mistaken. With GLX enable, when I try out a GL screensaver, xorg crashes with no real error messages. Since I am using these as pretty much dumb terminals, I am not too worried about it, but it would be nice to have. Linux 2.6 and Gnome 2.14 are much much better than Solaris 9... If anyone sees room for improvement, by all means, please let me know.